I‘m starting this week’s round-up with a recipe for nettle beer shared by a new member of the Smallholders Online community:
Nettle beer
2 carrier bags’ full of young nettle tops. Shake them off and wash in cold water if you prefer your beer without too many sozzled bugs.
40 pints of water
6lb of sugar
The juice of two lemons and oranges
Sachet of ale yeast
4oz cream of tartar
You can make half the quantity, just use less yeast accordingly. So, make a 20 pint batch with half a sachet of yeast. If you haven’t got a stock pot or maslin that can take this much water, make a half quantity (one bag of nettles) and halve the water again to 10 pints, add the other 10 pints again at the end.
Bring the water to the boil and pour it over the nettles. Mix and leave to infuse to blood temperature.
Strain into a pan. Because of the amount of liquid, we use a clean plastic trug that is kept for the purpose.
Add the lemon and orange juice, sugar and cream of tartar. Heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.
Rehydrate the yeast as per the instructions on the sachet.
When the nettle tea has cooled so it is barely warm, stir in the yeast.
Cover and leave for 3-4 days. We cover ours with a muslin cloth tied over the top and a very loose sheet of aluminium foil over the top of that. The muslin ensures that no bugs drop in and the foil ensures that the cat doesn’t clamber over it and end up in your beer.
Bottle it up into swing type bottles, these bottles are thicker which is important as the beer will continue to mature in the bottles and will be under very high pressure when opened.
It can be drunk after two weeks, but we find the “greenness” mellows beautifully if left for at least 3 weeks.
I’ve recently been drinking nettle tea, (encouraged by reading Mark Boyle’s book, The Moneyless Man) and I am definitely going to try beer as well!
Two new sites
My semi-aimless stumbling around the web has brought me to two very interesting sites this week:
- The first is Lynne Fang’s Upcycled Love, with this very interesting post on the science of sustainability.
- The second is the amazing work being carried out in a distinctly dodgy Kansas City neighbourhood by The Urban Farming Guys. They are: “…about 20 families who have purposefully uprooted from out of their comfortable suburban homes and moved into one of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City. We bought homes within a 5 block radius of each other and we put down our stake for the sake of the youth and the poor. What is going to happen to us … who knows, but this is certainly not some novelty idea, and please don’t try it yourselves without thinking it through. We are a band of revolutionaries.”
Video goodies
Finally, two excellent videos I’ve happened upon this week.
First, in the wonderful serendipity of the web, my online friend Alison Wiley introduced me this week to the work of Julia Butterfly Hill, and then today I happened upon this video of Julia talking passionately about disposability:
Second, WFA luminary Marian Van Eyk McCain posted this video to Smallholders Online about how to create a keyhole garden:
Have a great week, everyone.